He continued down the road and reached the port as night was falling. Some fishermen had approached the comrades he had left behind on the ship and were talking to them, trying to sell them the fish they had caught in exchange for resin and pitch, if they had any. Diomedes went aboard and had them cast off. His comrades began rowing and he steered towards Asteris, where the rest of the fleet was waiting. The men slept on their rowing benches and set off again at dawn. A southern wind had picked up and the ships hoisted their sails. The current carried them north as well, towards darkness and night.
His pilot, Myrsilus, asked him: ‘Was there news of Ulysses? Did you see him?’
‘No,’ answered Diomedes. ‘He has not returned. I begged him not to go back to Ilium, remember? The weather was worsening. Perhaps the storm caught them as they were leaving and the wind cast them up on some unfamiliar beach. Ulysses is the best of us all on the sea. If he has not returned, who could have been saved? What have you learned of the route which awaits us?’
‘There is land before us, towards the west,’ replied the helmsman. ‘Some say it is an island, others a peninsula. Land lies to the east as well. Not one of these Ithacaeans has ever gone far enough north to find other lands in this direction. But they have heard tell that the winds are perilous and unpredictable, the reefs treacherous. The land which stretches out to the north is different from ours; it is low to the sea, often enveloped in mist and clouds. The sun’s rays don’t touch it for long periods of time, neither when it rises in the morn nor sets in the evening. The people who inhabit these lands are strangers to all and their language is incomprehensible.’
‘That is where we shall go,’ said the king. Then he went to the bow and stood there, motionless, his head in the wind and the sun on the blond hair that fell to his shoulders. He threw off the humble cloak that he had worn to Ithaca with a mind to surprise Ulysses. But Ulysses was not to be found. His voyage would lead him into the unknown, and only the memory of his friends could follow him there.
They sailed for many days, and stopped every night on dry land, where a promontory stretched out from the continent into the sea or where an island offered shelter. A few of the men would go inland to look for food and water. They cast out their nets sometimes and caught fish or gathered up crabs, shellfish and other sea foods along the beaches.
The coast did not change much; inlets and promontories, islands small and large. At the horizon, towards the east, a chain of mountains always followed them, some low and others tall, towering over the sea. They often saw men fishing near the coast, tossing their nets from small boats carved from a single tree trunk. Sometimes, at night, they would see lights twinkling in the dark, fires burning on the mountain tops. They would hear shrieks echoing amidst the craggy cliffs, sounding like the cries of eagles.
The further north they travelled, the more the sky became grey and dark, mirrored by the sea.
One day his comrades asked Diomedes to go ashore. They had seen the mouth of a river, with a small village. They wanted to take what food and women they could, before continuing their journey. Diomedes consented, although he was against the plan. Fierce people often inhabited such poor lands, and he was afraid they might be lying in wait behind the mountains looming nearby. They beached at a small cove and dropped their anchors. Myrsilus led a group of men to the top of a hill to observe the village. It was a cluster of huts standing along the banks of the river; each hut had a pen for animals. They heard bleating, the braying of donkeys and barking of dogs. But not a human voice.
Evening fell, but the menfolk had not returned to their huts; they could sense the presence of the enemy. They sat all together out in the open, armed. They sniffed the air like sheepdogs guarding their flocks, lifting their snouts to pick out the scent of a wolf.
3
When darkness fell Myrsilus led the attack. Diomedes was against it and did not take part. He had agreed to them taking women and food, but he ordered the population to be spared, as much as possible. He remained on his ship with a few comrades as Myrsilus and his men charged forward shouting.
Other shouts answered from the bottom of the valley and from the houses of the little village, and the skirmish began. These were poor men, bearing rough, primitive arms, but they fought furiously to save their wives and children.
Their resistance did not last long. Their weapons broke as soon as the conflict started and they withdrew, continuing to throw stones, but they could not make a dent in their assailants’ large bronze shields and crested helmets. They would have been all slain then and there, had not something that terrified even their assailants occurred.
A horn sounded shrill and long from the mountains, followed by shouting so loud it seemed to come from thousands of men yelling at once. A great multitude of warriors appeared at the pass that descended between the valley and the sea. The blazing torches they carried formed a river of light that ran down the wooded slopes of the mountain.
The village men and the Achaean warriors fighting in the little field near the town took no heed at first, absorbed as they were in the brawl, but the women turned towards the mountain and then towards the sea, raising their arms in a gesture of despair. In just a few moments, their tranquil existence had been completely overturned; they were being attacked both by land and by sea, by strangers who knew nothing of each other.
Diomedes saw what was happening from his ship and immediately realized the danger his comrades were in. He called his slave, a Hittite named Telephus whom he had taken prisoner in Ilium, and ordered him to sound the signal for retreat with his bugle, but the valley was already thick with battle cries, with clanging weapons and neighing horses. Myrsilus and his men did not hear and continued to strike out at the villagers.
Diomedes saw the invaders’ advance guard racing down from the mountains behind the village. They were wild and relentless, flying like shades from one hut to another, riding their horses barebacked. They carried off everything they could find, accumulating it in great heaps, and then set fire to the huts. The wind licked the flames high, lifting columns of smoke and sparks towards the sky. The native warriors, crushed between the two enemy formations, would be soon overcome, and once they had fallen, Myrsilus and his men would find themselves surrounded, with no hope of escape.
Diomedes donned his armour and ordered the rowers to direct the ships to the coast.
His ship was the first to enter into the circle of light which the flames cast towards the sea, and he stood tall at the bow, clad in blinding bronze, under the standard of the kings of Argos. He threw out his arms, gripping his spear in his right hand and his shield in his left, and he let out the war cry. The cry that had terrified the Trojans, throwing their ranks into disorder and panicking their horses. Diomedes’s war cry echoed again and again, and the din on the beach ceased. The invaders turned and were struck dumb by the sudden apparition. Behind them the long column continued to descend the mountain, massing inland with great commotion. Myrsilus and his men took advantage of the moment to retreat with their backs to the sea. They pressed close, side by side, shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield.
One of the invaders strode towards the beach and let out a cry of his own, waving his weapons in the air and gesturing for his men to fall back. It was evident that he wanted to take up Diomedes’s challenge to single combat. The royal ship advanced until it was nearly at the beach and Diomedes leapt into the water fully armed and advanced towards his adversary. Myrsilus’s men opened their ranks to let him pass, closing tight once again behind him. The waves lapped calmly at the pebbles along the shore but on the western horizon a long rip in the clouds revealed a strip of crimson as if the sky, wounded, were bleeding into the sea.